At any one moment, somebody is standing alone at a bus stop, ferry terminal or train station, silently panicking. They are terrified that they’ve slipped into a world between worlds, that the bus or ferry or train is not, nor will it ever be, coming for them, and they shall remain trapped here until the end of time.

He tried to remind himself that the process of ageing wasn’t a disease, it wasn’t a contagion— itcould not be caught.

And when he couldn’t do this, he tried to think of it as a disease that he had already caught. But it occurred to him that this made ageing a disease which was advancing on him at every second of every day.

Then he tried to tell himself ageing was a disease that everyone had caught. But instead of a feeling of camaraderie, he was faced with a feeling of inevitability, like when you’re driving on a country road and a deer jumps out and you know you’re going to hit it.

So he told himself ageing was a thing like hair growth, it just happened slowly over time and, like with hair, you should treat it all gently. And so he took extra good care of his hair, and was calmed.